A site dedicated to discussion of all things ultimate in Canada and beyond!!!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

White Mountain Open

Nation,

The Ottawa program is heading to Hanover, New Hampshire this weekend for the White Mountain Open. We'll be a little short staffed for both squads, but we'll be looking to turn some heads in both the elite and the open divisions respectively.

I quickly realize that the past year's success/failure is the only thing that early tournament organizers can go by to determine where you are seeded this year. For a program like ours, with many new players and depth/strength we have not previously enjoyed, it's something we're going to have to play our way through. Conversely, a team like Magma is in a complete rebuild, and they will be hard pressed to hold seed.

As much as I think Firebird could handle an elite seed for this tournament, I think the open seeding will be just fine. We're short in terms of our roster size this weekend (again.. a bad thing if we want to turn heads this year outside of our country) and we'll find plenty of teams that will play squirely ultimate. Learning to play and beat those teams is just as important as giving the big boys a run for their money.

It is also not lost on me that last year, a team called Slow Children ran the bejebus out of us in the final game of the Boston Invite last year. They weren't slow at all. They had some solid young players who really played some good ultimate. We play that team first thing Saturday, and we'll be looking to have a better outcome.

I guess we have our motivation not to take any teams lightly.

Does anyone know who the best teams in this tournament are? I have many eastern US readers, so maybe they can shed some light on the teams.

2 comments:

I'm excited to match-up with one of the Dartmouth teams considering they just came off a great showing at UPA Nationals. I gather they are going split-squad/may have players who weren't eligible for the series with them, but they are going to be good.